Such a long journey

Daily Times	Thursday, August 12, 2010

COMMENT: Such a long journey —Dr Mohammad Taqi

Do we have the answers to why we are in such a sorry state? Can we at least ask the relevant questions, and in a timely manner? I must meekly submit that not all of us do

“I wiss you health, I wiss you wealth,

I wiss you gold in store;

I wiss you heaven on earth,

What can I wiss you more?”



The above was the toast proposed at a little girl’s birthday by Mr Dinshawji, a character in Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, that was later adapted into a film. I am not sure if it was Dinshawji’s perpetual difficulty in pronouncing the ‘sh’ sound, the simple yet wholesome wish or the blackout that plunges the house into darkness immediately after he proposes the toast, which first made these lines get stuck in my mind. But, somehow, I am reminded of these words around the 14th of August every year. I do wish Pakistan heaven on earth, and more.

However, I also cannot get the blackout that jinxed the birthday out of my mind. The toast, then, does not remain confined to what more one can wish Pakistan, but also involves how, and how to deal with the perpetual blackout that has jinxed its 63 birthdays.

In these pages, Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain and my dear friend, Dr Ali Hashmi, have alluded to the same issues. Deploying Lenin’s terminology, Dr Hashmi has put the question more bluntly: what is to be done? To arrive at this question, he has neatly deconstructed the narrative of the failed state, down to the state structures that have failed its citizens. At the very outset of our journey, Dr Hashmi’s illustrious grandfather, Faiz Ahmed Faiz had alluded to the failures in his poem, Subh-e-Azadi (The Dawn of Freedom):

“These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light,

This is not that dawn for which, ravished with freedom,

We had set out in sheer longing,

So sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harboured,

A final haven for the stars, and we would find it.”

This metaphor of the long, arduous journey somehow became a fait accompli for us. Whether Rohinton Mistry’s realist fiction was inspired by Faiz’s revolutionary romanticism is not known but his work is clearly inspired by Firdausi, Eliot and Tagore. It is during times like the present that one might seek inspiration from — or at least solace in — works of art; Lenin did. His work, ‘What is to be Done?’ was inspired by a novel with the same title by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. In fact, Lenin’s essay was a sequel to his ‘Where to Begin?’ By quoting Firdausi’s Shahnameh in the opening of his book, Mistry clues us in:

“He assembled the aged priests and put questions to them concerning the kings who had once possessed the world. ‘How did they,’ he inquired, ‘hold the world in the beginning, and why is it that it has been left to us in such a sorry state?’”

Could this be a eureka moment in our ‘what is to be done’ quest or at least be our ‘where to begin’ spot? Firdausi’s protagonist appears to have arranged a think-tank of sorts or a roundtable conference perhaps. I agree with Dr Hashmi that op-ed writers and keyboard warriors cannot deliver the goods. But perhaps they can help provide a start. We have been talking past each other for years. Could the 100 plus columnists writing daily be Firdausi’s aged priests, but communicate with one another? Do we have the answers to why we are in such a sorry state? Can we at least ask the relevant questions, and in a timely manner? I must meekly submit that not all of us do. But the ones who do, could they be brought onto one platform to formulate the travel plans for the onward journey? However, no such plan can work without the real protagonists — the people of Pakistan.

In Mistry’s novel, the protagonist, Gustad Noble, an ordinary man, is given to doing “something about the stink” next to his abode, aptly named the Khudadad (God-given) building. It is simply not possible for anything to get done about the stink around us without getting our very own Gustad Noble onboard. This is what needs to be done. This is what the modern high priests pontificating through computers must do.

Mistry’s choice of the surname Noble for the protagonist’s family was no coincidence — he believed in the noble nature of the people. But he also pointed out the instances where the Nobles fell prey to the pitfalls of everyday life in post-colonial states. Gustad inadvertently got entrapped in an establishment intrigue while his wife, Dilnawaz, resorted to black magic to ward off all the evil that had afflicted her family, specifically their son not living up to their expectations of going to a professional college and their daughter’s prolonged illness. Such are the situations where the real protagonists — the people of Pakistan — may benefit from some handholding by the opinion-makers. Enabling the people to see through the shenanigans of the power-players around them is the least that thought leaders can do.

The key influence on Mistry’s work, including the name of his novel, is T S Eliot’s poem, Journey of the Magi. Eliot, himself going through a transformation from agnosticism to faith, had noted in his poem:

“All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down,

This set down,

This: were we lead all that way for,

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly.”

Eliot was right that no matter how bitter, hard and inhospitable the journey might have been, it certainly led to a birth: that of a multinational state. Given the deadly experiences — military rule, wars, suicide bombings and ravaging floods — the people may ask though, like Gustad did:

“Would this long journey be worth it?

Was any journey ever worth the trouble?”

The answer would be a subdued yet definite yes, for the alternative does not exist. An appropriate toast would be the conclusion of Faiz’s aforementioned poem:

“Night weighs us down; it still weighs us down.

Friends, come away from this false light.

Come, we must search for that promised Dawn.”

To the people of Pakistan, I wish a dawn not jinxed by blackouts.

(Note: English translation of Faiz by Agha Shahid Ali)

The writer practices and teaches Medicine at the University of Florida. He can be reached at mazdaki@me.com